Family's New Additions: 5 Girls

Adoption Gives Family Happy Reason To Grow

YORK — With nine children in the middle and a parent at each end, the conference-size dinner table is still too small.

Dinner is noisy, but "yes, ma'ams" and "no sirs" frequently punctuate the conversation. When everyone is finished, each child clears his or her plate and waits for instructions from Mom.

This isn't the Waltons, it's the Mastens, and they are not your usual family. Capt. Robert Masten and his wife, Carolyn, adopted five sisters in February, bringing the number of their children to nine, all adopted.

"The number of children didn't matter. If you're going to adopt two, why not five?" asks Capt. Masten, commanding officer of Yorktown Naval Weapons Station.

The couple, who have been married for 24 years, met with the five sisters several times. The Mastens and the girls were put together through United Methodist Family Services in Virginia Beach.

In February, after a year of paperwork, applications and interviews, the girls - who had never been on an airplane before - flew with the Mastens from Kentucky to Virginia and began their new lives in Yorktown.

On the airplane, Mrs. Masten gave each child a lengthy list of possible new names. New names would give the girls a fresh start, the Mastens said. By the end of the flight, each girl had picked a favorite.

The girls say though they slip occasionally and use their old names, they like the new names better.

Capt. Masten, 48, says, "You just have to decide this is something you want to do. If you aren't genuinely committed, it won't work. We entered this pretty realistically."

Though they attended five weeks of classes to get ready for the girls' arrival, he laughs, "You can't prepare for this."

In addition to the girls and the four other adopted children, the Masten family includes Mrs. Masten's parents, who live in an apartment near the family's house.

Alex, who is 20 years old, was adopted when he was 5 days old, and Sydney, a 16-year-old sophomore at Bruton High School, joined the family when she was 12 days old.

Their next two children were brothers, Sean, now 9, and David, now 7. The Mastens adopted the pair when they were 5 and 3 years old.

"I love kids. With the boys, I refused to see them until I knew we were getting them because I knew that as soon as I saw them, I was dead," Capt. Masten says.

The couple urged the new children to start saying "I love you" immediately to everyone in their new family.

"Of course, the meaning of `I love you' is different on the first day than on the hundredth day, but it's important to say it right off," says Capt. Masten.

Mrs. Masten, 46, says there is an immediate bonding. "You start looking at them with a possessive eye, and you start planning for their future right away."

Sydney says that she used to bug her parents for a sister and now she plays older sister to five.

There have been some minor bathroom and chore disputes, but Capt. Masten says, "We raise independent children and that invites hassles. And the chaos level has increased, of course. Old habits are no good - like doing the laundry once a week."

His wife says they expect disagreements from the children. She also believes in rewards and treats for good grades.

The couple raves about sibling adoption programs because in addition to allowing the children to grow up together, it is somewhat easier to adopt siblings.

They say that people who have waited but who have been unsuccessful in adopting a child should consider sibling groups.

"Usually adoptees have not been treated very well. It's extremely rare to find that not the case. There's often neglect and abuse. They've got to be survivors - and these kids are," Mrs. Masten says. She and Capt. Masten declined to discuss the circumstances that led to the girls being put up for adoption.

Will the couple adopt even more children?

"If you had asked me that after adopting the boys, I would have said no," Capt. Masten says. "So I can't predict that now - you never know."